Lu Xing Cong Xi: Journey From the West
by justplainrii
Summary: When he was six, Lee, his cousin Tenten, and their families left their home village in the Land of Earth as refugees in Konoha, a place of an entirely different people and culture.  Life can be hard when you're the new kid, and nobody speaks your language


A/N: Hey, just some short bits before I start this attempt at an original Rock Lee backstory fic.

The Shan people, where Lee's family comes from, are from a very rural, mountainous area far to the northwest of Konoha, in the Land of Earth. Their culture, for the most part, is similar to that of the Chinese of our world. Their language is, essentially, Mandarin.

A quick note on the rough pronunciation and meaning of names:  
- Xuan is pronounced "Hshoo-an" and means "To Spin."  
- Li Long is pronounced "Lee Low-ng" and means "Powerful Dragon."  
- Tian Tian is pronounced "Tee-en Tee-en" and means "Sweet Heaven."  
- Cai Hua is pronounced "Tsai Hwa" and means "Intelligence."  
- Fei Xing is pronounced "Faye Hshing" and means "Flight."  
- Qi is Chi, or Chakra in the Narutoverse.  
- Tai Qi Quan is Tai Chi, the martial art.  
- Kou Nong Hua is pronounced "Ko Nong Hwa" and means "Mouth of the Peasant's Flower." It makes no sense, but it's the best that the Shan could do to transliterate "Konoha."

I'm not the best at transliterating Chinese sounds to paper, so I have done my best.

The poetry of each chapter comes from an English translation of "Journey to the West," a traditional Chinese folktale about San Wu Kong, or Sengoku, the Monkey King.

Please read, and review, if you liked!

-///-

**Lu Xing Cong Xi**

**Journey from the West**

-///-

_We can hide here from the wind_

_And shelter from the rain_

_With nothing to fear from frost or snow_

_And never a rumble of thunder_

_The colored mists grow bright_

_And the place smells lucky_

_The pine and bamboo will always be beautiful_

_And rare flowers blossom every day_

_- Journey to the West, Chapter 1_

-///-

"Cousin Cai! Tell me again about Kou Nong Hua!" Li Long, of the Xuan clan, asked.

"Again?" Cai Hua replied, glancing over his shoulder from where he was looking off the side of the cart, boredly. "I told you like five minutes ago!"

"Again!" his little sister, Tian Tian, urged. She sat at the end of the cart with Li, the cousin that shared her age of six.

"Just tell them the story, already," Fei Xing, younger to Cai by only a year, said. "It'll keep them from getting in trouble."

"I'm sick of telling it!" Cai said. "Haven't you two heard enough about Kou Nong Hua? We're going to be there soon, anyways!"

"But it's so far away!" Li whined. "I want to keep hearing about it, until we get there!"

"Yeah, tell us another story!" Tian Tian added. The two began to whine together, until Cai finally sighed, and said, "All right, all right, I'll tell you a story!"

The two children cheered as Cai, oldest of the four at the age of nine, and hence the most intelligent (at least in his opinion), took a seat between his cousin and his sister.

"So... Kou Nong Hua..." he said, slowly, as if tasting the words.

"What does it look like?" Tian Tian asked.

"What does it _look_ like?" Cai echoed. "First of all, there's trees! Millions of them!"

"Millions of trees? Really?" Li said, his dark, round eyes shining at the thought. They were his mother's eyes. "Does each one have a family?"

"Of course not!" Cai replied. "Stupid, Nin don't have those."

"Trees?" Tian Tian asked, slightly teasing.

"No, Clan Trees!" Cai replied, in faux outrage, and the two children giggled. Fei sighed from the other side of the cart.

Of course Kou Nong Hua wouldn't have Clan Trees, all of them knew. The ways of the Nin were going to be different than the Shan, the mountain people who built their wood-and-clay homes around the sparse, miraculous trees that managed to find root in the dry, rocky soil.

Li had cried as he said goodbye to his clan's tree, the twisting, gnarled thing that gave shade to the eastern side of their home. He wouldn't see it anymore in Kou Nong Hua, the wonderful tree heaven that had extended a hand of welcome to the Shan People, terrorized by the Rock Nin. The Rock Nin, so terrifying, made the ground rumble like thunder and claimed the land of the Shan as their own. Li knew that there would be other trees there, but none of them would match the gorgeous old tree of his home. He was sure of that.

"If every tree in Kou Nong Hua belonged to a clan," Cai continued, "there'd be more people than stars in the _sky_ living there!"

"Wow, that many!" Tian Tian exclaimed. "That many trees!"

"Yes," Cai said, attempting to sound wise again. "The Nin live in the trees, you know―and they're little, even as adults! As little as you!" He poked his little sister in the stomach, and she giggled.

"Why are they so small, cousin Cai?" Li asked.

"It's so that they won't bend the branches and break them, when they walk over to visit their wives and their fathers," Cai explained. "All the Nin can do this! It's because they're like birds, and they have air inside them. That's why they're so light."

"No, they're not," Fei said, her voice annoyedly drifting to them from where she sat. "Stop telling them lies, brother Cai."

"Oh, and how should you know?" Cai replied cattily. "You've never been to Kou Nong Hua."

"And neither have you," Fei replied, turning over so that she sat with her back against the side of the cart. "However, Father has; and unlike you, I actually _listen_ to him, instead of making things up."

"I'm not making things up!" Cai said. The two youngest children began to laugh at him.

"Yes, you are," Fei continued. "The Nin are the same size as regular people, for one, and they are _not_ filled with air. There's a few watching the carts, remember?"

"That's because they only send the biggest outside the village. And how come Father said they can fly through the air, huh?" said Cai, finally telling a truth, for once.

"They use Qi to strengthen their bodies, stupid," Fei said. "It's like what Father and Grandfather and Uncle Hui do in the morning, with their Tai Qi Quan."

"That's why Papa's so strong!" Tian Tian piped. "But, how come the Nin can do magic with their Qi and not us, sister Fei?"

"They have a different kind of control with their Qi, little sister," Fei said, scooting her way forward to join them. "They know how to take Qi _out_ of their bodies and use it, while we learn how to keep it in the body and strengthen it. At least, that's how I think it works."

"Wow..." Tian Tian said. "Sister Fei, you think we could learn that all someday? How to release Qi like the Nin do?"

Fei's eyes wandered to the foreign Nin that walked beside the cart, in that unusual green piece of clothing that enclosed his chest with a strange material that felt like woven glass when they asked to touch it; the man that spoke in the strange, flowing language of the Nin, that seemed to twist and wind and bubble like a river. "Maybe," Fei replied.

"You two are young enough to start school properly with the rest of the Nin kids," Cai said. "Fei and I probably won't be able to."

"I bet you can, cousin Cai!" Li said, his face becoming unusually intense. Cai began to laugh, and even Fei found herself giggling a little.

"Well, we can certainly _go_ to the same school," Fei said, "but I don't know if we'll be able to learn as fast as you about things. We'll be really behind."

"That's silly, sister Fei," said Tian Tian. "It's a real school! I bet you'll learn so much more there than just listening to Old Xi."

Cai laughed again, although Fei didn't this time―Old Xi was the kindly, elderly woman that taught the children of the clan in writing and history. Her husband taught basic arithmetic, and Qi control for the difficult task of handling the massive cattle that had been the charge of the Shan people for as long as their history stretched.

While the two of them were well-loved and certainly did their job, teaching many children how to read and write the intricate characters of their language, it was universally agreed that the structured educational system that the leader of Kou Nong Hua promised upon their entry was much more desirable than the lessons of a single old man and woman. Old Xi was going to Kou Nong Hua with the rest of them, along with her husband―their cart was further up ahead.

"It's certainly going to be _different_," Fei said morosely. She was going to sorely miss sitting in Old Xi's home, writing words with ink and brush.

"Besides, you two are younger," Cai continued. He had stopped laughing, but still smiled. "You get to start with easy stuff right away."

"We still have to learn how to speak Nin, right?" Tian Tian said, frowning a little. "It sounds so hard!"

"I'm sure we can do it!" said Li, kicking his legs that dangled over the side of the cart. "It sounds very beautiful."

"Meh, I think it's more weird-sounding," Cai said. "Hi ni ho ni hai ni blah blah blah― so weird!'

"You're really bad at impressions, you know that?" the unflappable Fei said. The children burst into a fresh set of giggles as Cai turned slightly red. "Besides, I learned a little bit from some of those Nin that are helping us get to Kou Nong Hua safe. Kou ni ji wa, ha ji mei ma qi tei. He-llo-nice-to-meet-you." She grimaced a little. "It feels so strange to say."

"Agreed," Cai said, nodding his head. "We still have to learn it."

"Hey, cousin Tian, how fast do you think you can learn how to speak Nin?" Li said enthusiastically. "We should have a race, shouldn't we?"

Tian Tian, with her round childish face, nodded. "Hai!" she said, grinning at the only word of Nin she knew.

-///-

The children went exploring early that evening, when the carts stopped to rest the oxen and let the wives begin preparing dinner.

Kou Nong Hua couldn't have been that far away, as everywhere they went, there were trees upon trees upon more and more trees, which amazed the children almost more than the prospect of moving to new environs. There were tall trees, short trees; trees with wide leaves and trees with skinny leaves; trees with smooth bark and trees with bark like pebbles stuck into clay.

More trees than there were stars in the sky, Li thought, as he wandered off with Tian Tian. Too many trees to count. He frowned, seeing how far ahead up the forested hill his cousin was. "Cousin Tian! I can't run that fast, slow down!" he called.

"Cousin Li, I'm not going to slow down! I can practically see Kou Nong Hua!" she said excitedly, clambering over a fallen log and further up the hill. "Come on, you can do it!"

Li gave her a frustrated glance, then brushed his long braid over his shoulder and onto his back, where it thumped as he ran. "But they said that we won't reach Kou Nong Hua for a few more days!" he said. "Cousin Tian, you're impatient!"

Tian Tian turned around and scowled at him, stomping her foot in the earth. "I am _not_!" she said. "Come _on_, hurry up, will you?"

Li laughed at her and climbed over the log, and together they walked to the top of the hill to a marvelous bluff. Miles of forest and, distantly, farmland, stretched out in front of them, and they gasped in the splendor.

"Sure can't see _that_ from the carts," Tian Tian exclaimed, sitting over the edge of the bluff and kicking her legs, much as she was doing earlier that day. "Isn't it pretty?"

"It's very pretty!" Li said, sitting as well. The sky was turning a peach-orange and pink, and lazy purple clouds stretched across the miles of land. "It's so different than home."

"Yeah. I mean... all that green! Can you believe that so many trees can even exist?" Tian Tian said, and Li nodded.

"It's like a dream, almost," he said. "Cousin Tian, can you believe that we're going to be there soon? In Kou Nong Hua?"

Tian Tian nodded, but her face was somewhat sad-looking. "What's wrong?" Li asked her.

"I'm scared, though," she said. "I mean, we won't be hurt by the Rock Nin anymore, will we?"

"No! That's what their leader said. The Huo Ying, the Leaf Shadow." Li thought it was an odd name for a leader to have, but said nothing of it as he continued. "Right?" he said, reassuringly―Tian Tian's face was unsettlingly sad and unlike her. "He said we'd all be safe there."

"No more thunder," Tian Tian said, almost dreamily, and looked at the sky. No, no more thunder, the rumble of earth as villages miles away were plundered and destroyed. Her parents would pray to their ancestors in the Clan Tree that Luan Shi, their small home, would be spared for the days to come. They were lucky.

She watched as a cloud, resembling a snake with its twists and curls, floated past. "It's going to be so different. Do you think that Kou Nong Hua has the same sky?"

"Same sky?" Li said, and his cousin nodded. "I guess so. The stars haven't changed at all since we've left."

"Maybe that's the only thing that won't change," Tian Tian said softly, and drew her knees up to her chest. "It's going to be so different."

"We can get through it," Li said cheerfully, patting her on the back. "Think about it! We get to go to school! School, cousin Tian! Maybe, someday, we can become Nin, even!"

She began to giggle a little at his enthusiasm, and looked up again. "That would be cool," she said. "Good Nin, Nin that help people."

Li nodded, when the leaves rustled behind them suddenly, causing them to gasp and hold each others' hands.

Fortunately for them, it was just Cai, with a strange jar filled with small, floating, glowing lights. "There you are!" he said. "Mother and Aunt Shan Ying have finished dinner, you should come back down to the carts!"

Tian Tian was fascinated. "What in the world is that?" she asked, pointing to the jar. Cai thought for a moment, before proudly brandishing the thing. It spilled yellow light onto his face, with its enormous mole on the side of his nose.

"These are called fireflies," he said, enunciating the world proudly. "Fei and I caught some. You can make lanterns with them! They're much easier than fire."

"Cool!" said Li. "Can we catch some too?"

"Not until you're older," Cai smirked, and began down the hill. "C'mon, let's go."

"It's all right, cousin Tian," Li said reassuringly, as they followed him. "There'll be lots of fireflies for you to catch, without telling Cai, in Kou Nong Hua. I know there is."

Even though Li didn't know whether or not there really were fireflies in Kou Nong Hua, the thought cheered up Tian Tian significantly, and they went on happily to their waiting meals of rice, and their mothers.


End file.
